Labor and Automobiles

By Robert W. Dunn

“…The purpose of this book is to present the true conditions of workers in automobile plants, and to contrast the wages of the workers in this industry with the millions of dollars in profits made by the corporations. This analysis is of particular importance, since the technical organization of the automobile industry has been held up, the world over, as the model achievement of American capitalism, and since its mass production and "labor management" methods are being copied by European corporations.
The problem of how to unionize the automobile workers is one of the most immediate and pressing ones now before the American labor movement. About 450,000 workers in car, body, parts and accessory plants are outside the ranks of organized labor. Why has no sustained effort been made to arouse these speeded-up workers to fight for organization and better conditions? It is vitally important for us not only to suggest an answer to this question, but to point out how unionization of these hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers may be achieved….” ROBERT W. DUNN - February, 1929.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Savine
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9788896365779

Book preview

INDUSTRY

Preface to Labor and Industry Series

This is one volume in a series of industrial studies being prepared by the Labor Research Association, an organization devoted to the gathering and interpretation of economic material for the labor movement.

The aim of this series is to present a picture of the development of the important American industries in relation to the workers employed in them. Other books dealing with American industries have been written from the viewpoint of the employer, the personnel manager and the technical expert. But they have all been interested in perpetuating the present system of exploitation and in piling up more profits for powerful corporations.

The present series gives primary emphasis to the workers and their problems. What does the future hold for the workers in these industries under capitalism? What is the trend of production? What are the wages, hours, and conditions of employment, and how do these compare with those in other industries? What is the extent of unemployment and the job insecurity of the workers? What profits are the companies making? What mergers are being carried out? How are the corporations organized to protect their interests as opposed to those of labor? To what extent are the workers organized—in company unions, in real labor unions?. How far has the welfare and enlightened industrial relations propaganda of the employers succeeded? What are the prospects of effective unionization? These are a few of the questions we shall attempt to answer in this series of labor studies.

Written from an avowedly labor point of view, these books will emphasize not only the specific grievances and hardships of the workers in a given industry. They will also attempt to make clear to the worker-reader the character of the forces operating in all American industry against the development of strong, militant unions and for the maintenance of the capitalist system.

It is hoped that these studies may serve as useful manuals for those who seek to put an end to the present conditions, and those who take seriously the frequently voiced phrase: Organize the Unorganized.

Besides presenting graphic pictures of the workers’ lives and struggles in particular industries, these volumes will also suggest concrete programs of action to meet the offensives of the corporations.

To those workers who desire a brief and simple analysis of the complicated structure of American industry, who wish to know the conditions that must be overcome before workers in America can be organized into a powerful and victorious labor movement, these books are dedicated.

Labor Research Association.

On the Belt

Author’s Preface

Two years ago the American Plan Open Shop Conference, an organization of employers devoted to fighting labor unions, held its semi-annual convention in Detroit. An article in a Michigan financial journal reported Henry R. Leland of the Cadillac Motor Car Company as telling this convention, that Detroit was a prosperous city, that there are many millionaires here, and that most of them have the Open Shop to thank for their success. Another article in a national magazine, about the same time, was entitled, Croesus Moves to Detroit and Creates a City with a Soul. Similar articles have referred to Detroit the Dynamic and The Wonder City.

All these characterizations may be correct from the viewpoint of the real estate operator or the company stockholder. But the writers for business magazines do not stop when they have glorified the prosperity of the great automobile corporations. They have glibly referred to high wages, shortness of hours of labor, splendid conditions of work, and the complete absence of the capital and labor problem in the motor cities.

This volume challenges such facile descriptions. It refutes the declaration of the president of the Detroit Employers’ Association that there are almost ideal labor conditions in Detroit. The purpose of this book is to get at the facts behind these comfortable phrases, to present the true conditions of workers in automobile plants, and to contrast the wages of the workers in this industry with the millions of dollars in profits made by the corporations. This analysis is of particular importance, since the technical organization of the automobile industry has been held up, the world over, as the model achievement of American capitalism, and since its mass production and labor management methods are being copied by European corporations.

The problem of how to unionize the automobile workers is one of the most immediate and pressing ones now before the American labor movement. About 450,000 workers in car, body, parts and accessory plants are outside the ranks of organized labor. Why has no sustained effort been made to arouse these speeded-up workers to fight for organization and better conditions? It is vitally important for us not only to suggest an answer to this question, but to point out how unionization of these hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers may be achieved.

In bringing to light the actual conditions experienced by automobile workers, the writer is indebted to a score of special students who have worked in motor vehicle plants during the last three years, and who have prepared factual reports on the day-to-day conditions of the workers. Three of these men who have been specially helpful in furnishing information are Robert L. Cruden, Cecil Hedrick and William E. Chalmers.

The writer has also been greatly assisted in his investigations by officers and members of the United Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers’ Union of America, as well as rank and file members of several other unions in the automobile centers. Scores of workers in the factories of Detroit, Pontiac and Flint have provided invaluable source material for this study.

A special obligation is owed to Ruth Budinoff who collaborated on a number of chapters, especially those dealing with wages and profits. In the preparation of the manuscript, the writer has, of course, received the active cooperation and critical help of fellow members of the Labor Research Association.

Robert W. Dunn.

February, 1929.

CHAPTER I - GROWTH AND IMPORTANCE OF THE INDUSTRY

We live in what has come to be called The Age of Motors. Each year it becomes increasingly difficult to realize that there was ever a day of the horse and buggy, when cities were not choked with cars, when the wide open spaces were not cemented to the earth by a broad network of smooth-surfaced roads, and when the morning papers were not bursting with advertisements extolling in poetry and song the merits of particular models and makes of roadsters, broughams, coupes, landaus and sedans.

It is only 35 years since Haynes, Duryea and Olds contrived their first self-propelled road vehicles, and only 32 years since the Duryea Company, the first automobile company in the United States, produced 12 cars. Real manufacturing of automobiles began only in 1900 with the organization of the Olds Motor Works. Olds produced over 425 cars in 1901. To-day, American plants turn out more than 4,000,000 cars a year; about 25,000,000 cars, trucks and buses are in use in this country; and motor conscious Americans employ some 317,000 filling stations to pump over ten billion gallons of gas every year into their tanks; while tire factories produce 75,000,000 tires a year to cover the wheels of these vehicles.

The consuming power of the motor industry as well as its producing power, is, indeed, stupendous. It has affected profoundly the development of several basic American industries providing it with various raw materials. For example, in 1927 it gobbled up about 82% of the rubber imports for tires, as well as 63% of the total plate glass production. It absorbed about 60% of the upholstery-leather, 14% of the finished rolled steel, 22% of the tin, 17% of the lead, 12% of the copper, 29% of the nickel (consumed), and 13% of the hardwood produced in the United States, in addition to great quantities of textiles, paints and other products.

Because of its great consuming power, and the number of industries that look to it as an outlet for their products, the automobile industry is regarded as the very foundation of American industrial stability. Some economists, like Foster and Catchings, contend that American prosperity is due chiefly to the automobile. They believe that no one industry and no combination of industries in any country has grown rapidly enough to furnish the stimulus to general business which the automobile has furnished in the United States. Thus the motor business has come to be considered one of the most reliable barometers of general business.

The growth of this industry has had an incalculable effect upon all that we call civilization in America to-day. It has affected, among other things, the solvency of trolley lines, the spread of suburban subdivisions, the growth of insurance companies, the mobility of labor, the world struggle for oil, government appropriations for roads, the reorganization of police forces, the accident death rate of the population, the profits of the cement industry, the technique of waging war, the frequency of real estate booms, the imperialist conquest of rubber-raising backward countries, the growth of consolidated country schools, the sales situation in the clothing industry, the professional standards of country physicians, the marketing radius of farmers, the extension of instalment buying, the prosperity of steel corporations, the rise of new cities, the spread of outdoor advertising, and the development of summer resorts.

A study dealing with the bearings of this industry on the labor employed in it cannot begin to mention even the most significant general social and economic implications of the rise of the motor vehicle from its luxury to its general use stage.

It is possible, however, to set forth a few of the outstanding facts concerning this industry merely as a setting for studying more closely its labor conditions.

The automobile industry was first recorded in the United States Census in 1899 as part the carriage and wagon industry. But by 1925 the Census of Manufactures shows that, measured by the value of its product, it is the leading industry of the country. In volume and turnover of business it outranks every other. All this within 25 years.

The following figures from this Census give the picture statistically from 1904 to 1925:

Trend of Automobile Industry, 1904-1925

¹

There were about 24,750,000 motor vehicles registered in the United States in 1928—21,630,000 cars and 3,120,000 trucks. We think of the telephone in terms of general use and wide distribution. Yet already in the year 1926 there were more automobiles in American garages than telephones in homes, shops and offices. And since then the number of automobiles has increased far more rapidly than the number of telephones.

The number of cars and trucks produced each year and their wholesale value are given for the period 1907 to 1928 in Appendix Table I. It shows that the growth was steady but not spectacular up to 1914. From then on the most rapid strides were made, particularly in the years from 1922 to the present, 1928 being the top year to date, recording an output of approximately 4,600,000 cars.

The great increase in what the workers in the industry produced each hour is also of special interest. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics finds substantial increases in output per man-hour in all American industry during the period 1914 to 1925. But in no industry studied, except rubber tires, has the increase been greater than in the automobile industry proper, and the tire industry, of course, is closely related to the latter. The largest increases in productivity are registered in those growing industries where technical improvements and automatic machinery have been steadily introduced. Among these the automobile has stood preeminent. In 1925 each worker in the automobile industry was turning out 2.72 times as much work as he did before the war. In other words, he produced nearly three automobiles for every one produced in 1914, and about twelve for every one he produced in 1900. The tendency has been accentuated since 1925. Rationalization of the industry leads to increasing exploitation.

According to the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce the automobile industry in 1927 employed directly; and indirectly over 4,000,000 persons. But this number (Appendix Table II) includes those working in tire factories, garages, repair shops and automobile finance companies, as well as chauffeurs, parts dealers, highway officials and all the workers in the industries supplying basic raw materials to the industry. The present volume has not undertaken to deal with the companies or the workers involved in such a grand total. We shall discuss here only those companies classified by the Census as engaged in the manufacture of motor vehicles and motor vehicle bodies and parts, employing in 1925 some 426,000 wage-earners. No other separate industries, with the exception of those classified by the Census as cotton goods and lumber and timber products, reported a larger number of wage-earners.

Types of Companies

Some of the companies covered in this book, such as Ford, General Motors, and Willys-Overland, are really a collection of industries manufacturing nearly all the parts used to construct a car and also assembling the car as a whole.² Others, like Marmon and Moon, buy all their bodies, parts and accessories from other companies, and are engaged solely in assembling the car and selling it. Still others, like Hudson, make their own motors, axles, chassis frames, and the more basic parts, while purchasing bodies, wheels, and many other parts from companies specializing in those lines.

Only 32 companies are listed as passenger car manufacturers by the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, if we count all General Motors’ divisions as one company and do the same with the recent Chrysler-Dodge and Studebaker-Pierce-Arrow combinations.³ These 32 companies manufacture some 44 makes of cars and about 765 models ranging in price from $385 to $12,500. (The average retail price of the cars sold in 1928 was $876.) The N. A. C. of C. also lists 12 companies as taxicab manufacturers and 46 as motor truck manufacturers, some of these, of course, being also makers of passenger cars. Some 28 companies, most of them from the truck group, are listed as motor bus manufacturers. Allowing for this overlapping we find altogether about 70 companies manufacturing finished cars, whether passenger cars, taxicabs, buses or trucks. This does not include a number of smaller truck companies included in the Census figures.⁴

Bodies, Parts and Accessories

With the recent phenomenal increase in the closed type of car (from 30% in 1922 to 85% in 1928) and the increasing emphasis on style, body manufacturing has become one of the most important branches of the industry. Bodies are usually made by separate companies in separate plants. Sometimes, of course, these companies and plants are owned or controlled by the company that puts out the finished car. After the body is finished in the body plant it is transferred to the assembly plant and attached to the chassis on the final assembly line.

The largest of these body companies is the Fisher Body Corp., a division of General Motors. It builds practically all the closed bodies for General Motors as well as for certain other companies. In 1926 it built more than half the bodies produced in the country for cars costing $500 or over. It has 44 separate plants spread all over the country, usually located near a General Motors assembly plant. One of these at Flint, Michigan, is the largest body manufacturing plant in the world. It has also large hardware plants operated by the Ternstedt Mfg. Co. and glass plants operated by the National Plate Glass Co., both of them subsidiaries of Fisher Body. Its timberlands and sawmills are located in a number of states.

Other typical companies, specializing in the production of bodies on a large scale, are the Briggs Mfg. Co., which operates six plants at Detroit and Cleveland (this company now does much of the Ford body work), the Murray Corp. of America with plants in a number of states, and the Hayes Body Corp. of Grand Rapids.

Certain manufacturers of passenger cars, such as Durant, Nash and Willys-Overland, have the bulk of their bodies made in their own plants or in plants which they control. The Hayes-Hunt Corp., for example, is controlled by Durant Motors, and makes bodies for all cars built by Durant and affiliated companies.

The several hundred motor and accessory manufacturers making all sorts of parts, accessories and equipment sell their products to companies turning out completed vehicles. The Timken-Detroit Axle Co., for example, builds a particular type of gear used in over 100 cars. Then there are roller bearings, spark plugs, shock absorbers, horns, magnetos, automatic windshield wipers, speedometers, electric fixtures, upholstery, hardware and the like, made by over 1200 specialty establishments on orders from the regular car manufacturers.⁵

The wheel business is to a large extent in the hands of a few specialists. The Motor Wheel Corp., for example, produces approximately one-half the total requirements of the industry. The Wire Wheel Corp. of America is another company specializing in a particular field. It claims to supply 70% of the wire wheels required by the industry with the exception of the Ford company.

Company Payrolls

Automobile plants, and bodies and parts manufacturing plants, come in all sizes, but the great majority of the workers are employed by the large companies operating extensive plants.

In the list of 39 automobile manufacturing companies reporting on accidents to the National Safety Council in 1927 were companies ranging in size from 75 to 47,000 workers while among the 36 automobile parts manufacturing companies the number of workers employed ranged from 40 to 5,000.

No governmental agency is permitted to furnish information concerning the number of workers employed by individual companies or particular plants. It is, therefore, difficult to secure reliable figures to show the reader, even roughly, the numbers employed by certain companies and plants. Some of the figures given below cover both salaried employees and wage-earners ; others include only the latter; a few are based on newspaper reports; others are official figures from financial yearbooks. Some include workers in domestic as well as foreign assembly plants; others only employees of the main plant. Despite these drawbacks and lack of uniformity, these figures may help one to gain some notion of the relative number of workers employed by certain well-known firms in various branches of the industry:

The only American corporations with more employees than General Motors are the United States Steel Corp., the Pennsylvania Railroad and the American Telephone and Telegraph Co.

Ford announced in January, 1929, that he would hire 30,000 new men by March. But